


Last Minute

by lod



Category: Persona 5
Genre: (big big endgame spoilers since it happens over endgame), End of the World, Kissing, M/M, Prompt Fic, Prompt Fill, Spoilers, Tumblr Prompt, canon adjacent, don't let me write canon adjacent ever again it is pain and suffering, loads of quotes from game dialogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-10-04 09:55:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20469125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lod/pseuds/lod
Summary: For the prompt "a kiss... because the world is ending."There's one thing on Ryuji' bucket list, and he's not going to die without getting it done.





	Last Minute

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NextTrickAnvils](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NextTrickAnvils/gifts).

There was something strange falling from the sky. It wasn’t quite rain; it dripped too heavily, and it was entirely not the right color. To Akira, it looked like watered-down blood, as if a bath that had gone very wrong was overflowing somewhere above them, flooding the city so that everyone was walking around ankle deep in the pink liquid. Around them terrifying structures had risen from the ground, towering tall as buildings like bones after a vulture had been over them, but not the bones of any living creature. It was what hell might have looked like, Akira thought, if he’d ever bothered to believe in or imagine it.

It would have been awful enough had it been the only consequence of their failure to change humanity’s heart, but there was worse yet. Akira could only look on in horror as, one by one, his friends dropped to the ground with their heads in their hands and their skin going translucent. Futaba disappeared first, with a scream, then Makoto, and after that Akira crumpled to his knees as his own head exploded with pain. He was almost grateful for the distraction from the annihilation of his entire team—of his best friends.

He pried his eyes open against the pain a few seconds later, terrified of finding only empty space where everyone had been, but he saw Ryuji crawling over to him, tense determination on his face.

“Ryuji?” he called hesitantly as his best friend closed the few meters between them and grabbed his face.

“I’m sorry, Akira, there’s some…” His voice wavered, then steadied again. “There’s something I gotta tell ya before we d—die, or—or whatever this is.”

Akira was confused, his headache threatening to drive out all conscious thought, but Ryuji seemed so serious that he willed himself to focus. There was a scream behind him that sounded like Ann, and Ryuji’s head snapped towards her—one more gone. Akira was beginning to feel strangely detached from the whole affair, as though there were only so much his brain could take before it broke.

Ryuji squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath before reopening them, hands still framing Akira’s face. His mouth opened a few times, but it seemed as though the words wouldn’t come out. Suddenly, his eyes went wide and Akira saw that his arms were beginning to go see through.

“No… no time,” Ryuji whispered, and in one smooth motion, he closed the gap between them and kissed him.

Akira gasped into the kiss, Ryuji’s lips like lightning against his while someone else screamed besides them. His best friend, his wonderful, beautiful best friend, kissing him, while around them everyone they loved died; how could this be both nightmare and dream at once? Nothing made sense, but—but he didn’t need it to make sense just yet, didn’t want to question this, reaching up as he felt the kiss fade away to press Ryuji closer and kiss him back—

Only to find himself grasping at thin air as Ryuji disappeared before his very eyes with a strangled yelp.

Akira fell onto his back like a puppet with its strings suddenly cut. It was too much. Too much fear, too much surprise, too much sadness; he couldn’t even begin to start understanding it all so he stopped trying, and found his mind completely free of thoughts as he watched his own body fade away.

* * *

Akira awoke in a familiar blue room with hazy memories of blood and bones and sorrow, and of warmth against his lips. He reached up to touch them and gasped as he remembered, jumping off the prison bench. If he’d woken up here, then maybe, just maybe, the others had too. His life hadn’t been very fair lately, hadn’t been fair at all in fact, but to be asked to go on alone after all of this… Well, that was more than he could bear.

He didn’t get a chance to ask. He’d barely been awake for a few minutes that he found himself in his full Thief’s garb, fighting for his life against the twin wardens he’d always thought were on his side, even if they had an odd way of showing it. He refused to go down without a fight, but it took very few hits for it to be apparent that he _would_ go down.

An attack forced him down to one knee, and he stayed there breathing hard and bracing against what would probably be the last hit he could endure, but it failed to come.

“No, this isn’t right… Our duty isn’t to kill him!” Justine exclaimed. He wasn’t sure why she’d suddenly changed her mind, but he was glad she hadn’t waited any longer to do so.

Finding out the true nature of the twins, meeting Lavenza, and learning that Igor was an usurper somewhat took his mind off of things. He had his hands full trying to follow the twisted explanation of the game that had been played with their lives over the past year. Then the god made his proposition, and offered Akira the status quo; everything back the way it was, the Phantom Thieves praised across the land. After what he’d just been through, Akira couldn’t reject the offer out of hand. Everything back the way it was sounded good when it was an alternative to the end of the world. There was one key piece of information he still needed, though.

“What about my friends?”

“What? The other Thieves?” The god laughed, and now he wondered that he had ever entertained the thought of trusting him at all, to hear that malevolent sound. “Don’t worry about them. You won’t need their power anymore. I’ll give you everything they had.”

Akira’s anger flamed back to life. “Then that shows how _little _you truly know about what humans want,” he snarled.

The god chuckled, and Akira suppressed the urge to attack him then and there; he knew he wouldn’t win alone against a god, but for the fate of his friends to be treated like a trivial aside…

“I’m not interested,” he spat.

“Very well then, I have no need of you,” the god said.

Akira, for the third time that day, prepared to die, but surprisingly the god only faded away. Was this Lavenza’s influence? In his absence, the true master of the Velvet Room reappeared. Igor introduced himself, his gentle voice so bizarre coming from the long-nosed face he’d grown used to over the past year. 

“My master has returned, and you won against that malevolent god’s temptation,” Lavenza said as Igor settled back in his seat. “Thus, you may be able to save this world that is headed toward certain ruin. However, it will prove difficult to win against him with your power alone…”

Was she saying what he thought, hoped, she was?

“What should I do?” he replied, using all his willpower not to grab the young woman and shake her until she answered.

“You must release your teammates, with whom you’ve shared your conviction.”

Akira stumbled as he felt the air go out of him all at once. “You mean…?” he gasped.

Igor chuckled warmly. “This place exists between dream and reality, mind and matter…”

“They have not necessarily expired yet,” Lavenza continued. 

_Expired_, he thought a bit nonsensically as Lavenza and Igor kept talking. Like they were eggs, or a yogurt at the back of the fridge. Yogurt that was _not necessarily_ expired. Maybe, but maybe not. They weren’t the reassuring words he’d have preferred, but beggars couldn’t be choosers, and any hope at all was enough to send his heart racing; he hardly heard anything the Velvet Room inhabitants said until at last Lavenza stepped aside to let him run into the prison’s dark hallways.

He didn’t truly let himself believe that his friends were ok until he saw Ann sitting in her cell. She wouldn’t move at first, her eyes vacant and her head pulled up to her knees, but it only took a few words of motivation before she got her spark back, and when she stood up in determination the door to her cell sprang open. After her, he found Makoto, Futaba, Yusuke… There was a clear pattern to the layout of the cells, a pattern he tried not to let himself notice but wasn’t able to ignore; for seven teammates, there were only six cells. When the fifth revealed Haru, it took all he had to conceal his distress as he talked her back to her usual cheerful self.

Morgana, his constant companion of the past year, or Ryuji, his best friend and months-long crush—there would be no winning here, regardless of whom he found in the last cell. The worst part was the knowledge, deep inside himself, that he was hoping he’d find a human and not a cat; the guilt consumed him, and Haru finally noticed it.

“Have you found him yet?” she asked in that soft, gentle voice of hers. “You two must have so much to talk about.”

There was an unmistakable tinge of sadness in her words. He knew that Haru’s feelings for him ran a bit deeper than friendship, and she’d been one of the last to go, so she must have seen the kiss he and Ryuji had shared. He shook his head, but before he could apologize, she smiled at him and put a hand on his shoulder, turning him away from her cell.

“Well, what are you waiting for, then?”

He bowed his head lightly to her and stepped back. Sweet, kind Haru deserved every bit of the romantic love she dreamed of. He hoped they would live long enough for her to find it.

* * *

Finding Ryuji sitting cross-legged in the last cell was as much the paradox for his feelings as he’d feared, joy and sorrow so equally dosed that he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He took a deep, shuddering breath, shoved all his sadness about Morgana—_Morgana, gone, no more friendly face in his school desk or in his handbag ever again, no weight on his chest as he slept at night_—into a box in the back of his mind to be opened later, and came to kneel by Ryuji’s cell door.

“Hey, ‘yuji,” he said warmly, tapping a finger against the metal bars.

Ryuji’s only response was to flinch and edge farther away from the door. Akira’s heart dropped like a lead balloon. Sure, all the others had been just as dejected when he’d first come to their cells, but he’d thought that after what had happened maybe it would have been different with him.

“Talk to me,” he implored.

“Did what we were doin’ have any meanin’ at all…?” Ryuji asked, still looking away.

“Of _course_ it did,” Akira replied.

Ryuji’s laugh was so bleak, so unlike himself, that it made the hairs on Akira’s arms stand on end. “Heh, you’re so freakin’ tough…”

_I’m not, _Akira wanted to scream. _Without you and the others, I’m nothing._ But he knew he couldn’t say that, knew that he had to be the strong one, so he didn’t say anything at all.

“Y’know, back when I thought we were gonna die without learnin’ the truth about all this… I kinda felt for the first time that maybe we hadn’t been doin’ the right thing… That maybe we deserved to lose, you get me?”

Akira wanted to deny it, he truly did, but… Ryuji’s words rang true. He wondered, too. They’d been so easily manipulated, by Akechi and Shido and now the god of control. Maybe they weren’t the heroes they thought themselves to be. Maybe they were just kids playing with toys that were too dangerous for them, who’d thought to save the world and destroyed it instead.

“I don’t know,” he sighed.

Ryuji glanced at him and looked back down at the stone floor.

“I’ve been sittin’ here thinkin’ about it since I woke up an’ I realised… I started all this ‘cause of how pissed off I was. Maybe it’s never been been about winnin’ or helpin’ people or anything like that. Maybe all I was doin’ was just continuin’ my own defiance. 

“..._No_,” Akira replied heatedly. Hearing Ryuji put it this way, it was obvious how wrong that was. “No way. Maybe we got distracted, and maybe we lost. But so what? Kamoshida would have abused hundreds more students if we hadn’t stopped him. Madarame would have driven more prodigies to suicide. Shido would have oppressed everyone who wasn’t just like him. Who cares what the motivation was? We still helped people. I wouldn’t do any of it differently.”

Ryuji turned to him at his outburst, finally meeting his eyes. After a long silence, he burst out laughing, the bright, cheerful sound sending a wave of relief washing over Akira.

“Yeah, I get it now. We’re doin’ this stuff to make sure people don’t gotta go through the same crap we did. It doesn’t matter if they think we’re just or not. We gotta do what we believe in!”

Ryuji jumped up, stretching out his shoulder.

“Heh, it’s not like people think much of me anyways,” he added a moment before his thief outfit flashed back into existence and the jail door faded away.

“That’s not true, we all…”

Akira’s protestation faded to awkward silence as the absence of a door between them left him exceedingly aware of Ryuji’s proximity.

“We all think a lot of you,” he finished in a strangled voice, recomforted only by the fact that Ryuji’s face was as red as his felt.

“I, um,” Ryuji reached to scratch at the back of his neck the way he always did when he was uncomfortable. “I really thought we were all gonna die and uh, heh, I guess it made me do some pretty dumb stuff.”

“So you…didn’t mean it?” Akira said, feeling as though Ryuji’d stabbed him with one of his own knives.

Ryuji licked his lips and looked at him for a long, awful moment before replying in a half-whisper.

“Someone like _you _with someone like _me_, I don’t know what I was thinkin’. It… it doesn’t have to change anything between us, does it?” His eyes begged Akira for a forgiveness he would never need, and Akira sagged in relief.

He took a step closer so that their noses were nearly touching.

“I dunno. I was kinda hoping it would,” he said in the most seductive voice he could manage, which probably sounded ridiculous but had the effect he’d hoped for.

Ryuji gasped. “I—you—_for real?_”

Rather than answering, Akira grinned and tilted Ryuji’s mask up to press a kiss to his lips, and then another, and another, until Lavenza coughed loudly in the distance and asked for everyone to gather in the main room in a rather pointed tone.

“Y’know, it’s kinda embarrassin’ to say this, but I’m real glad I met you,” Ryuji said, cheeks still flushed, as they made their way to meet the others.

Akira reached over to grab his hand and squeezed it. “Yeah, it is pretty embarrassing.”

“H—hey!”

He laughed. “Almost as embarrassing as how glad I am I met _you_.”

Ryuji reached over with his free hand to punch his shoulder lightly, muttering “_dick_” and leaning over to kiss his cheek beneath the mask.

To their friends’ credit, none of them said anything when they came in holding hands; even Ann, who looked like it was the hardest thing she’d ever done, managed to hold back for the time being. Akira had no illusions that she’d continue to do so after all this was over, though. Then Morgana returned, his true nature revealed, and the last missing piece of Akira’s heart slotted back into place. They still had to save the world, but with all his companions at his side, their bonds stronger than ever, Akira couldn’t imagine for a second that they would lose to some corrupt god.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope this didn't come out as dull as it feels to me. Writing canon adjacent stuff can kinda sap my creativity with having to contort to canon...  
Anyway, come find me on [tumblr](https://thermopylod.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/thermopylod) if you wanna chat!


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